


a monster doesn't cry, a monster doesn't feel

by Canonymous (orphan_account)



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: AU Where Diego Can Read, AU where five busts vanya out before she goes all white violin, Good Brother Number Five | The Boy (Umbrella Academy), Hargreeves Teamwork, No Apocalypse, No Incest, Number Five | The Boy-centric, Patch Lives because i miss her, Vanya Hargreeves Needs A Hug, also, and find awkward friendship along the way, and they try to train her up and get her powers under control, as far as i can tell he never does in the show (eyes emoji), he tries, ill add tags later, you know. its tua
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-07-11
Packaged: 2020-05-30 22:08:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19412380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Canonymous
Summary: Five is fairly certain being a mediocre brother to Vanya isn't going to bring about the end of the world, now that she's not panicking, locked in a room deep in the mansion. But he also figures she's a little overdue for some awkward sibling guidance, or whatever one might call it.A smile or two won't kill either of them (he hopes).





	1. a brother is many things; a hero, not one of them

**Author's Note:**

> im back on a tua kick for some reason?? and ive always loved vanya and fives friendship so. heres this

They’re not even talking when they’re interrupted, but Five doesn’t take kindly to it, nonetheless. Vanya’s hands curl into fists at the sound, and he doesn’t bother turning--he blinks two feet to face none other than their brother, Luther, who looks about ready to put his fist through a wall at the sight of the two of them.

“ _Why_ ,” One demands, grating on his ears, “is she in your room?”

“Oh, this must be hard for you, Luther,” Five murmurs, condescension dripping like venom from his tone. He doesn’t stop the hostility prickling in the air, nor does the tension in his shoulders lessen, at the sight of his brother. “You see, I have this thing that allows me to get in and out of places pretty quickly. A power, one might call it?”

“She’s _dangerous!_ Have you _seen_ what she did to Allison? You don’t make these decisions alone, Five!” Luther grits out, voice raising enough shuffling in the other room soon turns to an audience, Diego appearing in the doorway behind his hulking figure. Perfect. Luther and Diego are at odds enough he can assume that means backup, and that’s three on one. 

Luther steps forward, and Five makes a jump between Vanya and him on everything except instinct, something deep in him blaring _keep her behind you keep her safe keep them safe keep them SAFE—_

“Oh, he doesn’t, but you get to?” Diego asks, eyebrows raised at the line. Five lets Luther’s attention drift, grateful for the distraction whether it was intentional or not. He’s trying to gauge how Vanya’s reacting to all the talking around her without looking right at her. He _hates_ being babied, and gets the feeling she’s have a similar reaction, all things considered. 

“I don’t seem to remember you being Mister Democracy about locking our sister up,” Diego adds, when the sentence prior doesn’t seem to rile Luther up enough. Five really can’t tell if Diego just likes a fight or if he’s trying, in some convoluted way, to keep them safe. Either way, it doesn’t distract Number One long enough to stop looking right through Five at their sister. He scrambles (with elegance, as all things Five does are) for a conversation point that doesn’t lead back to the bomb in the room. 

“Listen, Luther, I have a feeling you know you aren’t getting a hold of either of us,” he drawls, asserting what he knows as true in hopes Luther is convinced of the same. “So here’s the thing: I would advise you back off and let Vanya stay here, where at least I let you keep up the pretense of having your eye on her, or the two of us vanish and you get to grapple with all the authorities on what you’ll insist is a real missing person case. I’ll take either, actually, but I’m under the impression you have a preference?”

It seems to do the trick, though he doesn’t let his posture slump. God, he has a headache. It shouldn’t be this hard to convince someone to not imprison their sibling, really, but nothing can ever be easy.

“Are you gonna answer him, or do we need to deal with this the old fashioned way, _One?_ ” Diego tacks on. Reluctantly, Five suppresses a roll of the eyes at the thinly (if at all) veiled threat. It’s so typically macho of him, even if he is agreeing with Five. 

“This isn’t over,” Luther decides, crossing his arms and turning to go. It’s probably to draw attention to how much bigger he is, but it just reminds him of the kid he knew almost fifty years prior. He surprises himself, verging on nostalgia like that. It was a lifetime ago. 

Luther’s shoulder clips Diego’s on the way out, and the way it sends him stumbling a couple feet starts an entirely different argument out in the hall. Devoid of the energy to deal with it, Five jumps and closes the door before doing the same to land on the desk near the bed.

Vanya’s not even looking in his direction. He thinks she’s probably doing the whole coming-to-terms-with-murder thing, considering the whole Peabody ordeal. He tries to find words to sympathize, searches for how it felt the first time he pulled the trigger.

He comes up empty. He didn’t kill for defense, or because he’d been wronged. Well--that’s not necessarily true, he _had_ been wronged, but the method of making things right was far from revenge. It was more of a ‘coming to terms with God or whatever fucking you over and fucking everyone else in return’ sort of thing, more than it was a seeing the life drain from some prick’s eyes. He wonders if she knows how much killing he’s done, briefly. They’d had little time to catch up between all the avoiding-the-end-of-times, and for the first time in a while, something painstakingly akin to shame burns at his core. He hasn’t known shame in.. a long, _long_ time.

“I’m pretty sure I can _hear_ you thinking, Five,” Vanya tells him, her voice startling him out of the rabbit hole he’d just begun to explore. He’s grateful for it, on some level. She used to be good at that, at pulling him from his assorted reveries and making him feel like a person. He’s been a lot of things through the years--a child soldier, back then. A weapon, throughout his time with the Commission, but now..

Now, with the end of the world a distant fear, he feels like he’s more a brother than anything else. _God,_ that’s sappy, he knows. But just as one can’t unring a bell, a thought can’t be.. unthought. (Thank God no one heard that ‘profound’ thought.)

“Physically impossible,” he informs her, trying to keep his voice light, trying to make it all upbeat and not cause the apocalypse. “Unless there’s more to your powers than we thought, I mean--”

It’s the wrong joke to make. Her face twists in a near scowl, turning back to the window. 

“That was what I call a joke,” he clarifies, running a hand through his hair. _Play nice. Treat her well. Don’t end the world._ “I’m.. usually better at them. I guess the whole impending doom thing is still throwing me off.”

“I’m _not_ going to start the apocalypse,” she says, through gritted teeth.

“Do your new powers include seeing the future?” he quips, the nervous energy infecting his body seizing control of his stupid mouth. He would never admit it, and he prays, to everything rumored holy, that she can’t see the terror gripping his entire frame. _The apocalypse is today. The apocalypse is today. The apocalypse is today._ He can’t seem to shake the idea, he knows it’s all up to her but he can’t stop worrying. He spent years upon years planning to make this stop and it has and it _will_ and he can’t stop.

“Five!” she snaps. “Can you stop acting like I’m about to explode? It’s _me._ Out of _everyone_ , I didn’t expect _you_ to be..” 

She falters, and he _hates it_ , because it’s like the longer she stares the more that uncomfortable look of pity grows in her expression. He turns to the window, enacting the same defense she did moments before ( _they say the eyes are the windows to the soul and she can’t look inside him and see all that inky black, he doesn’t want Vanya to know the dark that coats his insides, not yet, not when she trusts him most of all.)_

“Afraid,” she finishes, though it seems she’s already resigned herself to another conclusion.

“I’m not afraid of getting hurt,” he defends, trying to calm his breathing. There’s still a lingering chill to Vanya’s voice, something he doesn’t quite recognize. “A little anxious the apocalypse I spent forty five years in the aftermath of is going to happen? _Maybe_ so. But not afraid of getting hurt.”

“Oh?” she asks, a sort of laugh in her throat. “I’m surprised you think I’m capable of getting the best of you, Mr.. Child Prodigy.” There’s a hesitance behind her words, a certain _this is supposed to be a joke. I’m not a monster. I’m your sister._ He plays it up a second later, a big eye roll coming naturally in response.

“I think we’d all count as child prodigies, really,” he admits. “Although maybe I was the prodigy...est. Yeah, I can see that.”

“You did get the most training,” she points out, brow furrowing. “Actually, speaking of which--”

“ _Please_ don’t try to rehash our childhood,” he pleads in deadpan, cutting her off. She gave a roll of the eyes to rival his own.

“No, I was actually going to ask if you think I’ll get.. control. Of my powers.” She scratches the back of her head, a wistful note to the words she surrenders next. “See, because having powers is really new, and you guys had all that training, and.. guidance--”

“Guidance is a _strong_ word--”

“And I just wanted to know if you think I can do that, too.”

He hates how raw her voice is. He can _always_ tell what Vanya’s thinking, what Vanya’s feeling, and it makes him want to shake her by the shoulders and tell her to stop. There are people who would use it against her in a heartbeat, people that _have_ used it against her, every emotion she projects. And there’s a little, tiny part of him that’s also.. jealous, that she can be that open.

“Honestly,” she adds, feeling the need to clarify. He nods.

“Well, it obviously won’t be as rigorous as what the old bastard and the six of us did,” he says with a typical bluntness, trying to think on it logically. “And we don’t exactly have an area to indulge your sort of power. We’d have to go somewhere more open so you don’t, you know, bring the entire mansion down. Like a.. field. A super relaxing field, with flowers and clouds and all that gushy mess.” He flashes a smile that he hopes comes off more brother-y than murder-y. “And I doubt Luther and you would spar, given.. yeah, both of you as people with history.”

“But you’re saying it could happen?” she questions, sounding fragile. “It’s a yes?”

“I could look at some training plans, yeah,” he tacks on, gears already turning in his head. He doesn’t miss the way she lights up at the direct _yeah._ “Guarantee you I’d be better than our old man was at it. All we’d have to figure out is who’d be willing to participate, and a location, really.”

“No Luther,” she echoes, “And--and no Allison. You know what I--” 

He waves a hand to cut her off, not looking forward to hearing a hundred apologies. He knows she’s sorry. Back in training as kids, they’d all taken it too far, at least once. Hell, they’d been kids. He couldn’t count the number of times he’d seen Mom patch his siblings--and himself--up.

“Well, I don’t know how helpful sparring with.. Klaus and Diego and I would be, but we could work something out. Probably. I mean, hell, we have all the time in the world now that it isn’t ending, right?”

“Right,” she repeats, an awkward smile curling on her face. He rubs a hand over his own face, because her smile is a little contagious ( _she’s not a monster she’s your sister she wants to be your sister_ ) and he doesn’t want to surrender his expression to a grin. _She’s your sister. She wants to get better._

He lets the smirk work its way on his face, anyway.


	2. the delication art of hargreeves herding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five does his best not to throw hands with his siblings, even if participating in training that benefits them all hardly counts as a favor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is boringe but i gotta get it out of the way so i can work on the parts i actually want 2 write so. sorry & here ! hope u like okay, comment and leave kudos !!
> 
> p.s. sorry if the formatting is weird it’s like 6 am so i’m on mobile, if it is i’ll fix it later. probably . hopefully

This is involving  _ much _ more social interaction than Five desires. It’s not that he doesn’t, on some level, love all his siblings. But  _ God, _ it’d been enough of a pain to get even two of them outside, he almost wants to call the whole thing off.

“Quick query: So this is a.. vacation?” Klaus questions, rubbing an eye like he’s only just woke up. Five had waited until a reasonable time to start on this endeavor, and the sky was well above their heads already—he figures Klaus, not unlike himself, has probably never heard of a sufficient sleep schedule.

“No,” he snaps, “I already told you, it’s a training exercise. Why do you people never listen to me?”

Klaus, unsurprisingly, is hardly paying attention, distracted staring off to the side. For the umpteenth time that day, a sigh escapes Five.

“So where is she?” Diego asks, waving a hand to gesture around the area. It’s a fair question; Vanya was supposed to be out here nearly twenty minutes ago, and is nowhere to be seen. Five would go looking for her, but he honestly doesn’t trust the two of them not to wander the second they don’t have supervision, so he’s stuck waiting instead.

Instead of explaining any of that, he glares up at Diego in hopes of silencing his doubts (because if he says she’ll be here and she isn’t, Five is wrong, and he can’t let them think he’s  _ ever _ wrong or how are they supposed to trust him?). Diego looks mostly unfazed. God, he hates looking thirteen again. It’s hard to translate the weight of all the senseless killing he’s done into a scowl when his voice still cracks.

He doesn’t have to, though, and thank God for that—Vanya finally makes an appearance, face a little red in the cheeks and nose. She jogs to meet the three of them, arms hugged around herself and an explanation at the ready.

“Sorry, sorry, I was just, um—Allison ran into me, so I wanted to talk to her, and it was sort of an ordeal—“ she hums, bouncing on the balls of her feet. The excuse seems to invite a question of elaboration, but really, Five doesn’t want to talk about what happened to Allison or how that went, so he breezes past with his own inquiry instead.

“Is she doing well?” he wonders, simply, as he heads to the car. He’d hardly seen her since she got hurt, other than any of the times he watched her sleep to make sure her chest kept on its pattern of rise/fall. It was just easy to fake dead, with how he’d seen them all before, and sometimes it took a little more than faith it wasn’t real to convince him.

“Yeah, she says she’s feeling surprisingly well!” she answers, bright tone not doing enough to cover the guilt bleeding through. “But—I know you don’t want to talk about feelings and all that, so I’ll spare you the gory details.”

“ _ I  _ want the gory details,” Klaus bemoans. “Give it to me straight, Vanya. Did you hug?”

“Shut up,” Diego adds, with the barest hint of a laugh to it.

“Yes,” she answers, anyway, hardly having to duck to load into the car next to Klaus once they head that way. Diego and Five both head for the front seat, and in a display Five refuses to admit is petty, he teleports in it instead. (Five has upwards of forty years of experience driving, thank you very much, and he’s great at it. It’s one of the few times his siblings are forced to acknowledge his competence vastly outweighs their own, even in this stupid gremlin body.)

Diego stares for a moment, and, evidently, picks his battle. He slides into the passenger side instead, muttering, “You’re lucky I hate authority so much, you little brat.” 

Five considers going twenty over the speed limit for that comment alone. He decides against it, but it takes him longer than he’d like to admit. Speed limits were  _ ridiculous, _ anyway. It was a dog eat dog world, and traffic laws coddled the modern population to a ridiculous extent. But he digresses.

“So, dearest brother,” Klaus asks, far too loudly for this time of morning, as Five starts the car, “Where  _ are _ we headed?”

He’d spent the majority of the night working logistics for training, as well as picking a location. Diego was on map duty by default, seeing as he’d ridden up front and could most likely.. read. 

“It’s a mostly open area next to where they’re doing reno on that library that almost burned down this direction,” he answers. “Pretty low vigilance, though, considering the construction team’s been on strike a week. It should have long sight lines, if I’m not mistaken—which I never am—which makes it the perfect spot to see but not be seen. Capiche?” He has a lot of experience tracking down spots to exist but to not be detected, in his line of work, and it hardly took any scouting to see the value in the library’s expanse of unused grass.

“Capiche,” Klaus mutters mockingly, aside to himself. 

“Aren’t you worried I’ll..” Vanya gestures vaguely with her hands, shy, like speaking her anxiety wils the worst case scenario into existence. “You know, the library?”

“What, collapse it? It’s half taken down already. We’ll be in and out before anyone can tell if it was us or the wind that changed a thing, anyway,” he asserts, confidence carrying far enough to ease the bunch of her shoulders. He counts it as a victory, although, to be fair, he counts most things as a victory in some way, shape, or form. He doesn’t like to lose. 

“I have a few cops at the station who could vouch for me, anyway,” Diego mumbled, somethin like fondness to his tone. 

“We’re relatively untouchable,” Five responded with a shrug. “Gift and a curse.”

“A curse?” Vanya asked, sounding somewhat amused at his melodrama. “How could that be a curse..?”

“I’m not sure. Life has a way of fucking me specifically over, though, so I’ll let you know when I think of it.” He paused, twisting the key and slipping it into his pocket. It made a faint scrape against the flask on the inside of his jacket, a harsh sound of metal and metal to signal the key out of the ignition, and thus the arrival at their destination. “Okay, everyone out, now.”

“Are we going to have, like, a montage sort of deal?” Klaus drawls, climbing out of the back seat. “I have a portable speaker for background music. Do we prefer ‘Unhinged’ playlist, or ‘Sexy Workout’ playlist?”

_ God, this is going to be  _ excruciating.


End file.
